150 Inspiring Quotes by Mother Teresa: Wisdom from the Saint of the Gutters
Mother Teresa, born Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu in 1910, dedicated her life to serving the poorest of the poor in the slums of Calcutta. Through her Missionaries of Charity, she touched countless lives and became a global symbol of compassion and selfless service. Her profound wisdom, drawn from a life of unwavering faith and dedication to humanity, continues to inspire millions worldwide. This collection of 150 quotes captures the essence of her teachings on love, service, faith, and the inherent dignity of every human being.
Table of Contents
- Love and Compassion
- Joy and Happiness
- Service and Giving
- Faith and Prayer
- Peace and Unity
- Kindness and Humility
- Life's Purpose and Meaning
- Strength Through Adversity
Love and Compassion
Mother Teresa's understanding of love went beyond mere emotion—it was an active force that could transform the world. Her quotes on love remind us that true compassion requires action and sacrifice.
"A joyful heart is the normal result of a heart burning with love. She gives most who gives with joy." - Mother Teresa
"I am not sure exactly what heaven will be like, but I know that when we die and it comes time for God to judge us, he will not ask, 'How many good things have you done in your life?' rather he will ask, 'How much love did you put into what you did?" - Mother Teresa
"Let us always meet each other with smile, for the smile is the beginning of love." - Mother Teresa
"Love is not patronizing and charity isn't about pity, it is about love. Charity and love are the same -- with charity you give love, so don't just give money but reach out your hand instead." - Mother Teresa
"Joy is the net of love by which we can capture souls. God loves the person who gives with joy. Whoever gives with joy gives more." - Mother Teresa
"It is not what to do, but how much love we put into the doing. We can do not greats, only small things with great love." - Mother Teresa
"Work without love is slavery." - Mother Teresa
"The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread." - Mother Teresa
"Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do, but how much love we put in that action." - Mother Teresa
"Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier." - Mother Teresa
"Every time you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing." - Mother Teresa
"We cannot all do great things. But we can do small things with great love." - Mother Teresa
"The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved." - Mother Teresa
"If you judge people, you have no time to love them." - Mother Teresa
"Love is a fruit in season at all times and within reach of every hand." - Mother Teresa
"Intense love does not measure, it just gives." - Mother Teresa
"We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty." - Mother Teresa
"Love to be real, it must cost—it must hurt—it must empty us of self." - Mother Teresa
"The success of love is in the loving - it is not in the result of loving." - Mother Teresa
Joy and Happiness
For Mother Teresa, joy was not merely an emotion but a spiritual strength that sustained her through the most challenging circumstances. Her insights on joy reveal its transformative power.
"Joy is strength." - Mother Teresa
"Joy must be one of the pivots of our life. It is the token of a generous personality. Sometimes it is also a mantle that clothes a life of sacrifice and self-giving. A person who has this gift often reaches high summits. He or she is like sun in a community." - Mother Teresa
"If you are joyful, do not worry about lukewarmness. Joy will shine in your eyes and in your look, in your conversation and in your countenance. You will not be able to hide it because joy overflows." - Mother Teresa
"Be happy in the moment, that's enough. Each moment is all we need, not more." - Mother Teresa
"Joy is a net of love in which you can catch souls." - Mother Teresa
"Profound joy of the heart is like a magnet that indicates the path of life." - Mother Teresa
"Joy is prayer; joy is strength; joy is love; joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls." - Mother Teresa
"A joyful heart is the inevitable result of a heart burning with love." - Mother Teresa
"Never let anything so fill you with sorrow as to make you forget the joy of Christ risen." - Mother Teresa
"We shall never know all the good that a simple smile can do." - Mother Teresa
"The best way to show my gratitude to God is to accept everything, even my problems, with joy." - Mother Teresa
"Joy is very infectious; therefore, be always full of joy." - Mother Teresa
"When you have joy, you have everything." - Mother Teresa
"True holiness consists in doing God's will with a smile." - Mother Teresa
"Let us meet each other with a smile, for the smile is the beginning of love." - Mother Teresa
"Keep the joy of loving God in your heart and share this joy with all you meet especially your family." - Mother Teresa
"Joy is love, the normal result of a heart burning with love." - Mother Teresa
"A happy heart is a good medicine." - Mother Teresa
Service and Giving
Mother Teresa's life exemplified the principle that true service comes from a place of love and humility. Her quotes on service inspire us to look beyond ourselves.
"I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples." - Mother Teresa
"The Simple Path: Silence is Prayer, Prayer is Faith, Faith is Love, Love is Service, The Fruit of Service is Peace" - Mother Teresa
"If you can't feed a hundred people, then feed just one." - Mother Teresa
"I see Jesus in every human being. I say to myself, this is hungry Jesus, I must feed him. This is sick Jesus. This one has leprosy or gangrene; I must wash him and tend to him. I serve because I love Jesus." - Mother Teresa
"At the heart of silence is prayer. At the heart of prayer is faith. At the heart of faith is life. At the heart of life is service." - Mother Teresa
"Let Him empty and transform you; and afterwards fill the chalice of your hearts to the brim, that you in your turn, may give of your abundance." - Mother Teresa
"There are many people who can do big things, but there are very few people who will do the small things." - Mother Teresa
"Give your hands to serve and your hearts to love." - Mother Teresa
"The fruit of silence is prayer, the fruit of prayer is faith, the fruit of faith is love, the fruit of love is service, the fruit of service is peace." - Mother Teresa
"I do not pray for success, I ask for faithfulness." - Mother Teresa
"We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop." - Mother Teresa
"Let us not be satisfied with just giving money. Money is not enough, money can be got, but they need your hearts to love them." - Mother Teresa
"If we pray, we will believe; If we believe, we will love; If we love, we will serve." - Mother Teresa
"The miracle is not that we do this work, but that we are happy to do it." - Mother Teresa
"Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person." - Mother Teresa
"We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence." - Mother Teresa
"The greatest good is what we do for one another." - Mother Teresa
"Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin." - Mother Teresa
"Seeking the face of God in everything, everyone, all the time, and his hand in every happening; This is what it means to be contemplative in the heart of the world." - Mother Teresa
Faith and Prayer
Mother Teresa's deep faith was the foundation of her extraordinary life of service. Her quotes on faith and prayer offer guidance for spiritual growth.
"Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies." - Mother Teresa
"God does not require that we be successful only that we be faithful." - Mother Teresa
"A sacrifice to be real must cost, must hurt, and must empty ourselves. Give yourself fully to God. He will use you to accomplish great things on the condition that you believe much more in his love than in your weakness." - Mother Teresa
"He will use you to accomplish great things on the condition that you believe much more in His love than in your weakness." - Mother Teresa
"Prayer is the mortar that holds our house together." - Mother Teresa
"I'm a little pencil in the hand of a writing God, who is sending a love letter to the world." - Mother Teresa
"We are all pencils in the hand of God." - Mother Teresa
"We too are called to withdraw at certain intervals into deeper silence and aloneness with God, together as a community as well as personally; to be alone with Him — not with our books, thoughts, and memories but completely stripped of everything — to dwell lovingly in His presence, silent, empty, expectant, and motionless." - Mother Teresa
"Prayer enlarges the heart until it is capable of containing God's gift of Himself." - Mother Teresa
"God speaks in the silence of the heart. Listening is the beginning of prayer." - Mother Teresa
"Prayer is not asking. Prayer is putting oneself in the hands of God, at His disposition, and listening to His voice in the depth of our hearts." - Mother Teresa
"The more you pray, the easier it becomes. The easier it becomes, the more you'll pray." - Mother Teresa
"Love begins by taking care of the closest ones - the ones at home." - Mother Teresa
"When I pick up a person from the street, hungry, I give him a plate of rice, a piece of bread. But a person who is shut out, who feels unwanted, unloved, terrified, the person who has been thrown out of society - that spiritual poverty is much harder to overcome." - Mother Teresa
"Faith in action is love, and love in action is service." - Mother Teresa
"Prayer in action is love, love in action is service." - Mother Teresa
"I know God won't give me anything I can't handle. I just wish he didn't trust me so much." - Mother Teresa
"God doesn't require us to succeed, he only requires that you try." - Mother Teresa
Peace and Unity
Mother Teresa understood that peace begins within each individual and radiates outward to transform communities and nations.
"Peace begins with a smile." - Mother Teresa
"We do not need guns and bombs to bring peace, we need love and compassion." - Mother Teresa
"If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other." - Mother Teresa
"In the home begins the disruption of the peace of the world." - Mother Teresa
"What can you do to promote world peace? Go home and love your family." - Mother Teresa
"If we really want to love, we must learn how to forgive." - Mother Teresa
"Peace and war begin at home. If we truly want peace in the world, let us begin by loving one another in our own families." - Mother Teresa
"Works of love are always works of peace." - Mother Teresa
"Let us not use bombs and guns to overcome the world. Let us use love and compassion." - Mother Teresa
"The way to peace is through love." - Mother Teresa
"We must restore the sacredness of family life and the respect for human life from the moment of conception until natural death." - Mother Teresa
"One of the greatest diseases is to be nobody to anybody." - Mother Teresa
"It is easy to love the people far away. It is not always easy to love those close to us." - Mother Teresa
"The openness of our hearts and minds can be measured by how we welcome the stranger." - Mother Teresa
"Let us touch the dying, the poor, the lonely and the unwanted according to the graces we have received and let us not be ashamed or slow to do the humble work." - Mother Teresa
"We must know that we have been created for greater things, not just to be a number in the world." - Mother Teresa
"Together we can do great things." - Mother Teresa
"I am a little pencil in God's hands. He does the thinking. He does the writing. The pencil has nothing to do with it." - Mother Teresa
Kindness and Humility
Mother Teresa's approach to kindness was rooted in seeing the divine in every person, treating each individual with the dignity they deserved.
"Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God's kindness: kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile." - Mother Teresa
"I would rather make mistakes in kindness and compassion than work miracles in unkindness and hardness." - Mother Teresa
"I prefer you to make mistakes in kindness than work miracles in unkindness." - Mother Teresa
"Christ came to be Father's compassion to the world. Be kind in your actions. Do not think that you are the only one who can do efficient work, work worth showing. This makes you harsh in your judgment of others who may not have the same talents." - Mother Teresa
"Let us more and more insist on raising funds of love, of kindness, of understanding, of peace." - Mother Teresa
"These are the few ways we can practice humility: To speak as little as possible of one's self. To mind one's own business. Not to want to manage other people's affairs. To avoid curiosity. To accept contradictions and correction cheerfully. To pass over the mistakes of others. To accept insults and injuries. To accept being slighted, forgotten and disliked. To be kind and gentle even under provocation. Never to stand on one's dignity. To choose always the hardest." - Mother Teresa
"Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless." - Mother Teresa
"Be kind and merciful. Let no one ever come to you without coming away better and happier." - Mother Teresa
"Humility is the mother of all virtues; purity, charity and obedience." - Mother Teresa
"If you are humble nothing will touch you, neither praise nor disgrace, because you know what you are." - Mother Teresa
"Do not think that love in order to be genuine has to be extraordinary." - Mother Teresa
"We must be very humble when we serve the poor. The more repugnant the work or the person, the greater also must be our faith, love." - Mother Teresa
"The trees, the flowers, the plants grow in silence. The stars, the sun, the moon move in silence. Silence gives us a new perspective." - Mother Teresa
"Let us be very sincere in our dealings with each other and have the courage to accept each other as we are." - Mother Teresa
"Humility is nothing but truth, and pride is nothing but lying." - Mother Teresa
"It is not how much we do, but how much love we put in the doing." - Mother Teresa
"We must never be afraid to be a sign of contradiction for the world." - Mother Teresa
"Do ordinary things with extraordinary love." - Mother Teresa
Life's Purpose and Meaning
Mother Teresa's insights on life's purpose centered on finding meaning through service to others and recognizing the sacred in everyday moments.
"Do we know our poor people? Do we know the poor in our house, in our family? Perhaps they are not hungry for a piece of bread. Perhaps our children, husband, wife, are not hungry, or naked, or dispossessed, but are you sure there is no one there who feels unwanted, deprived of affection?" - Mother Teresa
"If I look at the mass I will never act." - Mother Teresa
"In the final analysis it is between you and God, it was never between you and them anyway." - Mother Teresa
"Hungry for love, He looks at you. Thirsty for kindness, He begs of you. Naked for loyalty, He hopes in you. Homeless for shelter in your heart, He asks of you. Will you be that one to Him?" - Mother Teresa
"Let us make one point, that we meet each other with a smile, when it is difficult to smile. Smile at each other, make time for each other in your family." - Mother Teresa
"The way you help heal the world is you start with your own family." - Mother Teresa
"There is hunger for ordinary bread, and there is hunger for love, for kindness, for thoughtfulness, and this is the great poverty that makes people suffer so much." - Mother Teresa
"Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty." - Mother Teresa
"Life is an opportunity, benefit from it. Life is beauty, admire it. Life is a dream, realize it." - Mother Teresa
"Life is a challenge, meet it. Life is a duty, complete it. Life is a game, play it." - Mother Teresa
"Life is a promise, fulfill it. Life is sorrow, overcome it. Life is a song, sing it." - Mother Teresa
"Life is a struggle, accept it. Life is a tragedy, confront it. Life is an adventure, dare it." - Mother Teresa
"Life is luck, make it. Life is too precious, do not destroy it. Life is life, fight for it." - Mother Teresa
"The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway." - Mother Teresa
"Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway." - Mother Teresa
"What you spend years creating may be destroyed overnight. Create anyway." - Mother Teresa
"People are often unreasonable and self-centered. Forgive them anyway." - Mother Teresa
"If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives. Be kind anyway." - Mother Teresa
"If you find happiness, people may be jealous. Be happy anyway." - Mother Teresa
Strength Through Adversity
Mother Teresa's perspective on suffering and adversity was deeply rooted in her faith, seeing challenges as opportunities for spiritual growth and deeper compassion.
"Suffering, pain, sorrow, humiliation, feelings of loneliness, are nothing but a kiss of Jesus." - Mother Teresa
"I think it is very good when people suffer. To me that is like the kiss of Jesus." - Mother Teresa
"Let Him empty and transform you; and afterwards fill the chalice of your hearts to the brim, that you in your turn, may give of your abundance. Seek Him. Knowledge will make you strong as death. Love Him trustfully without looking back, without fear. Believe that Jesus and Jesus alone is life. Serve Jesus, casting aside and forgetting all that troubles or worries you, make loved the love that is not loved." - Mother Teresa
"Am I ever angry or frustrated? I only feel angry sometimes when I see waste, when things that we waste are what people need, things that would save them from dying. Frustrated? No, never." - Mother Teresa
"Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love but to use violence to get what they want." - Mother Teresa
"I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love." - Mother Teresa
"Without our suffering, our work would just be social work, very good and helpful, but it would not be the work of Jesus Christ." - Mother Teresa
"Suffering is a gift of God a gift that makes us most Christ-like. People must not accept suffering as a punishment." - Mother Teresa
"Pain and suffering have come into your life, but remember pain, sorrow, suffering are but the kiss of Jesus - a sign that you have come so close to Him that He can kiss you." - Mother Teresa
"The greatest disease in the West today is not TB or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for." - Mother Teresa
"We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love." - Mother Teresa
"There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread but there are many more dying for a little love." - Mother Teresa
"Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat." - Mother Teresa
"I have come to realize more and more that the greatest disease and the greatest suffering is to be unwanted." - Mother Teresa
"The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty -- it is not only a poverty of loneliness but also of spirituality." - Mother Teresa
"There's a hunger for love, as there is a hunger for God." - Mother Teresa
"Loneliness is the most terrible poverty." - Mother Teresa
"The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis, but rather the feeling of being unwanted." - Mother Teresa
Conclusion
Mother Teresa's words continue to resonate decades after they were first spoken, offering timeless wisdom for navigating life's challenges with grace, compassion, and purpose. Her legacy reminds us that true greatness lies not in grand gestures but in the small acts of love we perform daily. Through her example and teachings, she showed that each person has the capacity to make a profound difference in the world, one act of kindness at a time.
Her quotes serve as a spiritual compass, guiding us toward a life of service, joy, and deep connection with our fellow human beings. In a world often marked by division and indifference, Mother Teresa's message of universal love and compassion remains as relevant and necessary as ever. May her words inspire us to see the divine in everyone we meet and to respond with the same boundless love that characterized her extraordinary life.
As we reflect on these 150 quotes, we are reminded that the path to fulfillment lies not in personal achievement but in how much love we put into our actions. Mother Teresa's life and words challenge us to look beyond ourselves, to find joy in service, and to recognize that we all belong to each other. In embracing this vision, we can each become instruments of peace and love in our own communities, creating ripples of positive change that extend far beyond what we can imagine.
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